"Tasteless
cult teen classic about counterculture youths
beating down the establishment to elect one of
their own as a 24-year-old president."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Tasteless cult teen classic about counterculture
youths beating down the establishment to elect one of
their own as a 24-year-old president. An uneven
exploitation spoof from schlocky AIP producers Samuel
Z. Arkoff & James H. Nicholson, that played the
Midnight Movie circuit during the 1960s and received
the stamp of approval from the heads who attended
those weed puffing screenings. It's based on Robert
Thom's short story The Day It All Happened. Veteran TV
director Barry Shear ("The Karate Killers"/"The Todd
Killings"/"Across 110th Street") is the filmmaker
responsible for this crude low-brow dark comedy on
youth power, that has some entertainment value if you
get past its stupidity. The satire, marked by crass
humor with an underlying sinister chill, succeeds
mostly in making the rebelling youth look as sleazy
and superficial as their elders, but nevertheless
manages to hit its establishment target a few times.

Disturbed teenager Max Flatow (Barry Williams)
trashes the house of his domineering mother from hell
(Shelley Winters) and passive moronic father (Bert
Freed) and then blows up dad's prized Chrysler, to
only run away from home to Beverly Hills living as a
24-year-old multi-millionaire rock star/drug pusher
renamed Max Frost (Christopher Jones). His groovy
entourage/band includes Sally LeRoy (Diane Varsi), a
former child star, vegetarian and acidhead; Stanley X
(Richard Pryor) drummer, anthropologist and author of
The Aborigine Cookbook; Billy Cage (Kevin Coughlin),
15-year-old Ivy League grad with an 186 IQ and Max's
guitarist and business manager; the stoned-out horn
player named "The Hook" (Larry Bishop); and, lastly,
Fuji (May Ishihara), Japanese typewriter heiress...
and beach bum.

Senate wannabe, the Kennedy-like 37-year-old
California Congressman Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook),
invites Max to sing at his rally to promote his
platform to get the vote for the 18- year-olds (the
legal voting age was 21 at the time). Max uses this
opportunity to demand that the voting age be lowered
to 14, and sings a song called "14 or Fight" which
becomes an instant hit. Max then calls for a
demonstration on Sunset Strip of the younger
generation, who turn out in huge numbers. After a
meeting with Max, powerful California Senator
Allbright (Ed Begley) rejects Max as a dangerous
wacko. But smoothy Fergus thinks he needs the youth
vote to win and tries to manipulate Max. But Max only
compromises by raising his voting age demand to 15 and
coming up with a new slogan "15 and Ready." Max gets
the country to change the voting laws by dropping LSD
into the water supply of Washington DC and thereby
getting the necessary 2/3 vote to amend the
Constitution, and then drunk with power runs for
president as a 24-year-old. He's swept into office by
getting the overwhelming youth vote. In office Max
proposes mandatory retirement at 30 and all those who
reach 35 are to report to "mercy stations" to receive
force-fed LSD treatments, wear blue robes with a peace
patch and listen to rock music, and has his youthful
goon squads enforce these laws. The president's
boisterous, selfish and hateful hysterical mom, hoping
to avoid the treatment camp, located behind barbed
wire, is dragged out of hiding by the youthful
enforcers deaf to her plea that she is a teenager, as
she cries out: 'But I'm Aryan...I mean, I'm young, I'm
young.' It blusters along with this ridiculous
storyline of democracy gone amok, and by the end those
under ten feel the 24-year-old is too old to be their
president and plot to unite all those under fourteen
to get the vote and kick out of office their
fascist-like older leaders.

Too many rough edges for my taste, as I never
understood its initial popularity—it must have been
the weed talking. It's enhanced by actual
footage from peace demonstrations against the Vietnam
War and the presence of real reporters like Walter
Winchell.